In-depth: BI breaks free of its binary chains

The
emergence of semantic and content analysis tools allows organisations to mine the meaning of
word-based information and turn their mountains of unstructured data into a strategic business
asset, says Ankush Korla.

Traditional business intelligence (BI) tools are pretty good at what they're designed to do, but
it's an inescapable fact that they are entirely stupid. Strictly speaking, they have no
"intelligence" at all: they merely trawl through an organisation's structured information -
essentially, business data such as revenues, sales figures and expenditure - and generate reports
that let management look into the statistical health of the business.

When it comes to data that can be expressed in numbers and values, traditional BI does pretty
well. But what about unstructured data? This information is not in the form of convenient digits,
but exists as written words in the millions of emails sent by employees; it is the
business-critical information that comprises reports, whitepapers and product guides; it lies in
corporate blogs and user-generated content. What's more, it encompasses information on the web and
outside the organisation's traditional perimeter.

This unstructured content contains a wealth of information that would, if it could only be
harnessed, be enormously valuable to any organisation. Sadly, traditional BI is almost entirely
useless at deriving insights from unstructured data. That's because unstructured information is
created for human consumption. Computers can perform billions of calculations a second, but they
can't understand the meaning or semantics of written words, the context in which they sit, nor the
sentiments they express.

The ability to understand the meaning of words lies at the heart of the next evolution of
information management, search and the wider web. It is not a single technology, but a new
generation of tools that employ the latest semantic and content analytics that can look at language
and the relationship between words in a way that much more closely mirrors how the human brain does
it.

Unlimited applicationsThe different ways in which semantic technologies could be applied are limited only by the
imagination of those employing them. Here, however, are a few examples that show how organisations
can plunder the wealth of unstructured information they generate and store, and make it truly
valuable to their business.

Take the common problem of locating the skills, knowledge and expertise that exists among a big
business's large and varied workforce. It is often the secret genius with a very precise and
particular expertise who is needed for a particular project rather than heads of department
with their necessarily broad subject matter knowledge. Those who work at the coalface are much more
likely to have that specialised knowledge, but by their nature are also far ess visible in the
organisation. That expertise resides in dozens of documents among thousands, thousands of emails
among millions.

Traditional search technologies are only really capable of finding instances of a certain word
or phrase, without any regard for the relationship between words or their context. Using these
tools, a pharmaceutical company searching for an expert on the contraindications of a particular
drug could pull up thousands of documents, databases and emails that contained the searched-for
terms. But the results would provide little or no information about the concepts being discussed,
the relevance of the content itself, or the relationship between different documents such as a
common authorship.

That capability is the province of the latest semantic search tools. They analyse mountains of
unstructured data and deliver usable facts as well as associating these facts across multiple
documents. They can turn a mountain of unstructured data from a burden into a strategic asset, and
not just one for senior management. If all staff are more easily able to find and use the content
they need to do their jobs effectively, the potential for greater productivity - and indeed for
sharing knowledge across the organisation - is enormous.

So far we have only touched on how this new generation of business intelligence tools can
analyse a business's own content. This is certainly valuable. But the technology really comes into
its own in analysing the wider world of online information.

No organisation is an island; all exist in an ecosystem, affected to a greater or lesser extent
by environmental factors. These could be a disparate as growing civil unrest in countries where an
organisation does business, uncertainty in local or global financial markets, or a surge in
negative sentiment towards the organisation itself.

Unveiling the truthSemantic and content analysis technologies make it possible, for the first time, to
monitor the billions of websites, social networks, blogs and forums automatically and in realtime,
enabling organisations to know not just where it is being mentioned, but how it is being talked
about.

This can give immediate insights into an entity's current online reputation. It can also be used
to study all kinds of trends that may affect the organisation. Because traditional BI tends to look
only at patterns of numbers, it cannot offer any insight into fears, anxieties and concerns being
expressed about, say, the global economy. As we all know, economics is as much about confidence as
it is about mathematics; the new breed of BI gives real and actionable insight into what people are
feeling and expressing, conferring a unique advantage on those who have it.

Semantic search and content analytics will not replace existing BI tools - as long as the binary
digit exists, there will be a place for traditional business intelligence. Instead, these new
technologies will complement the old, enabling organisations to gain vital intelligence from both
structured and unstructured content.

Value-added resellers and service providers interested in reselling Aruba networking hardware and software can learn the benefits of becoming an Aruba Networks partner with this standardized checklist. Compare Aruba's reseller partner program with other vendors' offering similar products.